Video Games : 2006 FIFA World Cup

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from: Electronic Arts

: 2006 FIFA World Cup

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Amazon Maximum Age: 20 years
Amazon Minimum Age: 60 months
Binding: DVD-ROM
Brand: Electronic Arts
EAN: 0014633151688
ESRB Age Rating: Everyone
Format: CD-ROM
Label: Electronic Arts
Manufacturer: Electronic Arts
Platform: Windows XP
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: April 24, 2006
Sales Rank: 15019
Studio: Electronic Arts

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
FIFA World Cup 2006 lets you battle your rivals as Midfield Maestro using physical play and on-the-ball skill. All-new tackling, dribbling and shielding with the ball give you complete control on the pitch; tactical button configurations mean you can execute strategic decisions on-the-fly during play. Determine your club's fate in a 15-year Manager Mode. The all-new animation system makes every button-press react with authentic, responsive and realistic speed. This is the only complete, authentic, and intelligent soccer experience. Experience all-new multimedia videos that highlight the golden moments and heritage of football history, past and present. My FIFA and Team Management tools set each aspect of the game to fit your individual playing style and preferences

Amazon.com Product Description:
Do you like the idea of not just watching but actually participating in the biggest, most-followed single event in the entire world? In 2006 FIFA World Cup, you are at the center of the action with the potential of re-writing history so that your favorite team wins. With thrilling gameplay, top-notch graphics, exciting crowds, and a great set of options, 2006 FIFA World Cup will have you bouncing out of your seat in excitement.



This game is packed with thrilling play, top-notch graphics, and exciting crowds. View larger.


There are two dozen famous players that can be unlocked and added to their national team's roster. View larger.


Every supporter in the crowd is armed with streamers, confetti, and balloons. View larger.
Your gameplay options comprise such real-life soccer staples as quick matches, practice sessions, and penalty shoot-outs, as well a the virtual staple of online play. In addition to these, 2006 FIFA World Cup includes global-challenge scenarios, an excellent FIFA Lounge mode, and the all-important chance to guide your favorite international team to victory in the World Cup competition.

2006 FIFA World Cup defaults to the semi-pro difficulty, the level at which you will probably quite handily cut through the competition's AI (artificial intelligence) like a hot knife through butter. But the World Cup mode is where most people start, and although its default settings have you assume control of one of the 32 teams that qualified for the finals, it also includes the 95 other teams that didn't make the final cut. You can now begin in the qualifying rounds in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania, or jump straight to the final 32 teams using real or randomly generated group information. If you are a veteran soccer player looking for a truly punishing challenge, the unlockable Perfect difficulty level will give you the game of your life.

The player animations in 2006 FIFA World Cup are excellent, and the controls are fully customizable. Although every player on the pitch has a handful of skill moves at his disposal, you'll find that good use of the intuitive first-touch controls, along with passes, through balls, and dummies, are your most reliable means of besting your opponents. The most notable improvements in this version of World Cup soccer are its new star players feature, the new shooting mechanism, and the penalty shootout.

Denoted by a star above their heads, there are two dozen unlockable players that can be inserted onto the bench of their respective national teams and can take over the game in a variety of ways. There are play-making passers like David Beckham, dribblers like Ronaldinho, speedsters like Michael Owen, and shooters like Alessandro Del Piero. Just like in real life, if you are able to play to your stars' strengths, you'll greatly increase your chances of winning. Penalty kicks are also more fun than ever. Opposing goalies can now dance, jump, and move left and right to get into the heads of the penalty kicker. As a kicker, your goal is to hit a small bar on a shot meter, which, if done successfully, allows you to power the ball into the selected corner with ease. However, if you take too long the goalie and the crowd will get to you, forcing the controller to shake and the bar on the shot meter to dance.

The overall presentation throughout the World Cup mode, and throughout the entire game, is amazing. Before each match, a camera positioned somewhere in orbit around the Earth zooms in on the appropriate German stadium, and you'll be treated to flybys of the grounds where almost every supporter in the crowd is armed with streamers, confetti, and balloons. You can choose to listen to one of the game's many licensed songs, which come from an eclectic soundtrack spanning 14 countries. Good pre-match commentary replete with World Cup trivia and anecdotes is the icing on the cake, and as your players line up on the pitch before kickoff, you feel the excitement of the moment. The UK announcing duo of Clive Tyldesley and Andy Townsend raise the bar in terms of soccer commentary. Combined with the chants and roar of the crowd, you will find yourself sucked in to a intensely immersive, emotional soccer experience, especially when leading your favorite team in the finals.

Another great feature is 2006 FIFA World Cup's global challenge mode, where you are tasked with matching or bettering memorable team performances from World Cup history in 40 different scenarios. For example, you might be required to jump into a game with only 30 minutes remaining and win by the same margin as the real-life victors, simultaneously trying to achieve bonus objectives such as keeping a clean sheet, or not having any players booked. And when you feel like pitting your 2006 FIFA World Cup skills against a human opponent instead of the AI, you can play online or to get some friends over for a FIFA Lounge session. Like its predecessor, 2006 FIFA World Cup requires you to either pay a small fee, or submit your e-mail address before you can play online.

2006 FIFA World Cup's Lounge mode supports up to eight players, although it can certainly be enjoyed by just two or three. Like the Lounge mode in its earlier iteration, 2006 FIFA World Cup's Lounge keeps track of your performances against all of the other participants, giving you a different options for determining who gets to play next. The Lounge mode also retains the "cheap shots" feature, which lets you level the playing field against opponents by using cheats you've earned during previous performances. As another fun option, the Lounge mode has a new risk-style map feature that allows you to take control of countries on the map by winning games with, or against, them.

The closest thing yet to experiencing the excitement and emotion involved in World Cup soccer, and at a fraction of the ticket price, 2006 FIFA World Cup is just too good to pass up.



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - The Best Soccer game for PC
I bought this for 20 bucks at Walmart when there was a giveaway sale, and thought I was gonna play a mediocre game. I was totally wrong. The gameplay in this version is excellent, the players look very close to real and the plasticity in their faces has been done away with.

the commentary is excellent, and unlike some other soccer games is actually pretty engrossing, cos they dont say the same thing over and over again. Scoring a goal is not so easy in the professional mode and that should keep you motivated to get better, and when you do score a goal, its an awesome simulation of players doing their antics and waving to the crowd.

I won the World Cup finally in this game, and the celebrations are fun to watch. Definitely the best FIFA soccer game I've played.


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Great improvement
I find it a very good improvement on previous EA football games, although I was already quite happy with FIFA 2005. I never got to purchase the regular (non World Cup) FIFA 2006, although I played it a couple of times and see why many find it a disappointment and a step backwards from previous editions.

In WC06, the nicest innovation is Global Challenge, where you can pick among 30 or so scenarios of historical games, and see if you can match or improve on the performance of the team you are handling. In a few of these, you are given the game at minute 0 and challenged to meet a particular score; in others, you get the game pretty late, or at a critical penalty or free kick.

Also, unlike other WC games, this one lets you take a team from qualifiers, not only at the WC finals, and you have almost 100 national sides to choose. Additionally, you get many more players per team than previous editions (in a couple of countries, your roster is 40 names long).

It takes a while to get used to the new way of handling corners, penalties and, especially, free kicks; once you do, you find that the change has been for the better. It takes a while, also, to get used to a few new controls, and that the lag between pressing a shot and having the player actually shoot has been extended.

The unlockable features are neat, especially invisible walls (of course, very unrealistic, but fun) and perfect difficulty. The graphics are great; some player faces look odd, but the stadia are pretty good. The star-players are an interesting innovation. The commentary is better than it used to be, and if you pick Spanish, you get commentary in that language, not only menus. One big bug, however, is that Spanish commentary quite often makes mistakes on players names.

I miss that the game does not have the "career mode" for coaches. Also, you cannot simulate games...if you take a team through the qualifiers, you have to actually play ALL games. Since qualifying sometimes requires 15 games or so, this may be tedious. Also, while I am enjoying the game more than its predecessors, and my 10-year old is too, his younger brother (who is 5) seemed to have a much easier time with the previous editions, where the fewer control options made it simpler to manage.

All in all, a major improvement.


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - VERY FUN AND CREATIVE
just like my title says, its fun and very creative and does not repeat the same over and over again like most other games out there.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - FIFA is catching up to Winning Eleven...
This is probably the best FIFA soccer game yet from Electronic Arts. Whereas in the past, Winning Eleven ran cicles around FIFA, the latter being plagued by arcadey gameplay and simple controls, this iteration of the venerable franchise actually has a good bit of substance.

The GOOD: Most World Cup games are really shallow, because once you play the world cup... that's it. This version allows you to play the whole WC qualifying tournament, which is great fun. You can take a tiny country, like the Faroe Islands, and try to qualify them for the WC. The graphics are pretty good, although in a soccer game, the fluidity is much more important that the actual pixel count. The game runs with no problems on my system, and the control is rather solid. FIFA now includes a more complex arsenal of moves and tactics, and is catching up to Konami's Winning Eleven (though the latter is still better). The music selection isn't bad for an EA game, and definitely conveys the international feeling of the game.

The BAD: The user interface and the menus are a complete and utter disaster. Trying to figure out where to go and what to click is brutal and counter-intuitive. When you want to save a game or select something, be prepared to go through a litany of popping screens and confirmation buttons, which sometimes respond to joystick presses, sometimes to mouse. Come on EA, is it that hard to design a clean interface? Also, I'd have loved to have this game include a full version of FIFA (with league play, etc); I know it's greedy, but then again, so is selling two soccer games within months of each other!

The UGLY: The player's faces. While generally realistic (Zidane, Ronaldinho, Riquelme, they're all here), the skin texture seems to make their faces look pockmarked and scarred, and generally pretty ugly. Small pet peeve, but hey...

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the replay value and the quality of this game. Recommended!


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - BEYOND OUTSTANDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THIS GAME IS PROBALLY THE BEST SOCCCER GAME EVER MADE. ALTOUGH THE WORLD CUP IS OVER, IT WILL LIVE FOR EVER WITH THIS GAME.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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